Maltese
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Of or pertaining to Malta or its language
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/mɑltiz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Maltese is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 176K(measured from records)
- ITItaly≈1 in 12K
- ISIceland≈1 in 30K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 287 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
≈22,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Italy, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Italian; ethnic name for someone from the island of Malta.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
How Maltese is read(measured from records)
Maltese is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English60%
lang., Malta
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Of or pertaining to Malta or its language.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish10%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Maltese in Spanish.
- Italian9.7%
habitante de Malta, com sufixo singular -ese
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
- French9.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Maltese in French.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Maltese counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 62K | — | Maltese | 2 |
| IT Italy | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 12K | listed | Maltese | 45 |
| US United States | 1,887 | 1 in 176K | 1.9K | Maltese | 287 |
| ID Indonesia | ≈840 est. | ≈1 in 318K | — | Maltese | 2 |
| FR France | ≈640 est. | ≈1 in 106K | 78 | — | 5 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈58 est. | ≈1 in 85K | — | Maltese | 1 |
| IS Iceland | ≈12 est. | ≈1 in 30K | listed | — | — |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; the xinhua-italian-manual register; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Maltese is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Italian; ethnic name for someone from the island of Malta.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Afrikaans, attributive form of Maltees
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, person from Malta; Maltese
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Francesco Nolettib. 1611MTnot in their usual nameMaltese painter (c.1610-1654)
- Michael Malteseb. 1908USAmerican screenwriter and actor (1908–1981)
- Corrado Malteseb. 1921ITItalian art historian and teacher (1921-2001)
- Diego Malteseb. 1928ITItalian librarian and library scientist (born 1928)
- Serphin Malteseb. 1932USAmerican politician
- Jean Malteseb. 1938FRFrench journalist
- Curzio Malteseb. 1959ITItalian journalist, writer and politician (1959–2023)
- Dario Malteseb. 1992ITItalian association football player
- Matt Malteseb. 1997GBBritish-Canadian singer-songwriter
- Leonardo Malteseb. 1997ITItalian film and stage actor
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 25 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.9K | #14,438 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.9K | #15,508 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.8K | #15,422 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 88 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 81 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 78 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 76 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 28 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 6 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 5 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 4 | — |
| IT Italy | 意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Maltese come from?
- Italian; ethnic name for someone from the island of Malta. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Maltese?
- A machine transcription gives /mɑltiz/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Maltese mean?
- In English, Of or pertaining to Malta or its language.
- In which country does Maltese have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 22 thousand people named Maltese in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled maltese.
- How common is the name Maltese?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,887 people named Maltese in 2010, about 1 in 176 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Maltese?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/malteseThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Maltese”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.